Hear me out. In my opinion if we take life as a phenomenon, it doesn't really make sense to ask living creatures if it's valuable. The answer would be biased and circular as living creatures would be evaluating themselves.
On the other hand, asking non-living creatures/things is useless also, since they do not have will of their own and therefore are unable to answer.
In my opinion, which could of course be wrong, it renders life as an occurrence value-less. Which in itself is not strictly good on bad, it's just how it is.
But if God is in the equation, he can evaluate life's value without bias, since he's not a creature, but creator and has will. In that case if we trust Exodus, we know that this evaluation is stated to be good. If not - then if life has value is unknown, but there's a non-zero chance there is value.
Does it make sense? What are your thoughts?
Edit: This is NOT a question about life's purpose or meaning. It's about objective value that is not dependent on someone's feelings. For example: "The guitar is objectively good because it's properties (like sound, form, resonance) are evaluated to be of high quality. Even if someone doesn't like guitars and doesn't know how to play it, it's value does not change."
Yes, absolutely. You can give any value to your life that you want. And even if you don’t think you can, why does it matter? Life can be enjoyed simply for what it is. Why does it need any external value?
I find external value to be important, when it comes to questions about if live is worth multiplying. I can have a child and find him/her valuable because of how they make me feel, but this child will be subjected to harsh conditions and ultimately death, therefore I'm interested in motivations to create more life independent of my own feelings.
If nothing we do matters, the only thing that can matter is what we do.
It's a basic aspect of existentialist thought. Without any inherent meaning, the meaning we create is the only meaning that matters.
If this is all we get, then what happens during our lives is much more important than if we were just waiting around to be let into heaven.
Except our own meaning doesn't matter. It matters to the individual, but that's it
And why should I give a shit about that?
Also, I didn't get into it, but shared meaning and ways to communicate that (e.g., art, relationships, etc.) is also relevant.
What matters to me will stop mattering to me, when I die, but I will matter to the people whose lives I've affected. Not that it'll matter to me then, but prior to me dying, knowing that is important to me.
There's no objective third party meaning, but that's a weird and artificial standard to measure your existence against.
It's not about "giving a shit" personally, it's about external view not impacted by personal feelings.
Again, why should I care about that?
I don't mean to be juvenile. I spent quite some time in therapy learning how to stop prioritizing some imaginary definition of external meaning.
What you experience is your reality. It absolutely means more than some cosmic truth about the purpose of your existence.
There's no reason you personally should, that's just unrelated to the question
Okay.
I have no idea what you're asking then.
But there's plenty of shit I don't understand, so no hard feelings.
The individual can assign as much or little value to life as they want, and certain stances may have a utilitarian bonus such as minimizing pain or maximizing pressure.
But no value which expands beyond the individuals opinion. I am generally a Christian Existentialist, so if I weren't Christian, I would still take the existentialist viewpoints.
In answer to your title question: yes. I believe even if God does not exist that our lives have value.
Existence is a fundamental good whether the God we think is real actually is or not.
The whole "only God can judge value without bias" thing falls apart when you realize God supposedly made us in his image, so wouldn't he be just as biased toward his own creation as we are toward ourselves
Maybe but I wouldn't go trying to psycho analyze an entity whose age is literally infinity with your human mind that likely won't be around to see 100 years
What do you mean by 'fundamentally good'? Why is it 'fundamentally good'?
Life actually has more meaning without God/afterlife. If there's no "eternity" on the other side, then that makes our life rare, and, thus, valuable. As opposed to simply being a vapor that passes like smoke.
I don't think that rarity impacts objective value in any way. I've broken a vase, and shards are unique, never seen before - it doesn't make them valuable.
In and of itself, no, I'd agree with you. But when an archeologist finds an otherwise normal pot shard or vase shard, they treat it with great care, study it, try and determine things about the maker and the user.
Rarity alone, I'll cede that point. But if this life is all we have, then would we not be motivated to add value to it however we see fit? Rarity as the impetus l would say, as opposed to rarity as the inherent value.
Why do we prescribe value and worth depending on the object’s scarcity? I’ve always been confused about this since I was a kid. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as hollow or meaningless? Gold for example. Idk everything about why gold is held at higher esteem than silver or bronze, but the main reason I get is because it’s rare. Then if we compare life to “being a vapor”, aren’t we being subjective? What if being gaseous or a nonliving thing is objectively better than life? What even is objective and who defines it? I have a lot of questions about subjective and objective value even with the existence of an eternal, personal God in charge of the standard; but that’s far closer to having an objective value of life than any other philosophy, especially one where value is just a synonym for rarity.
There are billions of humans, not exactly rare. This idea is kind of like valuing a banana that will rot in a few days over a pristine sculpture made from marble that will last a millenia
In your hypothetical, am I hungry?
The meaning of life is in the word: the meaning is to live.
Most religions and philosophies point to living for more than oneself. By doing this, you increase the “livingness” of your own life. By your single life, you might square (2) or even cube (3) the livingness of your single life into others.
I think that is the purpose of a human life; viewed from scientific, metaphysical, and spiritual lenses. To increase Life.
We certainly fail because War is a direct opposite of increasing livingness; increasing Life. But we are human and contain both light and darkness. That is our “game”.
You contain both good and evil? What will you do? That is the Game of Life.
It absolutely makes sense to ask living creatures if life is valuable. We are the ones who are doing the living. If we value it, it has value whether or not some supernatural being exists or not.
If you care to hear their opinions, sure. But that's all they would be, it would all be subjective
100%
Life is what you make of it. We are born, we die. It is up to you what worth your life has, not anybody else
Hey, I don't know if you have gone down the thought processes of what life would be like if there really truly was no God, but I think that humans are designed to find meaning. In that way, yes, I do think life has inherent value, even without God. Do I believe that there is no God? No, I do not.
You're going in a weird direction so I'll give partially related thoughts. If God isn't real, then life wouldn't have any meaning. Like Nietzsche said, without God all there is is Nihilism, Hedonism and Control. This is what I've seen from Atheists personally, they don't really see much purpose rather than making themselves and others happy and they are more often willing to do bad things to make their group in power, whatever group that is. The reason is because if life just ends at death there really isn't much.
But since God exists, there is an ultimate purpose, to believe in God and receive eternal life in perfect communion with him. We don't have to worry about how we won't exist in the future or about worldly things like power or hedonism, we can be happy knowing what God will do for us, amen.
That doesn't resonate at all with what I've seen from myself and other atheists that I know.
Being happy and trying to make others happy? How terrible!!!
That's true of humans in general and not specific to atheists at all.
What have you seen?
I think you're proving my previous point here. These are very good things, but there is much more purpose than just this.
I agree, it's part of human nature. Christianity however discourages us from this, Jesus says love our enemies and that sin is wrong regardless, so the ends do not justify the means.
That doesn't resonate at all with what I've seen from myself and other atheists that I know.
Not nihilism, hedonism and control certainly. Mostly just people going about their lives the way that everyone does.
If we take a broader view of what "make happy" means and take it to include improving the lives of themselves and others, I think that's a great purpose.
I mean obviously ideally any coherent belief system should discourage doing harm, but your comment that atheists are "more often willing to do bad things to make their group in power" rings hollow when it is currently Christian nationalists who have allied with the worst people imaginable and seem to be pretty successful in their power grab for control of my country's government.
People just going about their lives sounds like a mix of Hedonism and Nihilism. Not having a purpose (Nihilism) and only really caring about happiness (Hedonism).
That broad view means that making people happy means making them Christian. You obviously mean improving people's current lives and having no care about the afterlife, which is why I said there's more than that, there's more than just the world.
In the US (if you're American) it's mostly the left wing who want to cause harm, they use violence because they don't see an issue. Of course there are bad Christians, but Christianity discourages wanting to grab power with bad means. Like we agreed it is human nature to want to grab power like this, when a Christian does it it means Christianity wasn't enough to stop them, when an Atheist does it it means they had no reason not to do it.
Oh... you are totally disconnected from reality.
Nice talking to you.
What I take from this is that my point of view is factual and easily proven, yours falls over under a little bit of scrutiny and because you have been so convinced of your point of view you just assume that I am disconnected from reality.
The truth is you are disconnected from reality, so reality seems disconnected from reality to you. Nice talking to you as well, sorry I had to get a bit harsh.
I gotta agree, happiness is not an ultimate goal of life. If it was, we'd all be on fentanyl 24/7 till death (that would come fast). We regularly compromise happiness for things like safety, family, morality, life itself and so on. Like there are people who are happy hurting others, but we don't encourage that, do we?
Nietzsche didn’t say atheism causes nihilism or hedonism. He hated hedonism and power politics as much as anyone.
Meaning also doesn’t require eternity. If only what lasts forever has meaning, then love, sacrifice, and moral courage would be meaningless . Finite things can matter because they’re finite.
Quote from Nietzsche:
"They have left the regions where it is hard to live: for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth.
Becoming sick and feeling mistrust are considered sinful by them: one proceeds carefully. A fool is he who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harassing.
One no longer becomes poor or rich: both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
‘Formerly, all the world was mad,’ say the subtlest of them, and they blink."
Whether Nietzsche hated hedonism or power politics is irrelevant, he recognised that without religion this is what people would lean into. He isn't saying don't be Atheist because it's bad, he believed Atheism was true and there is no meaning.
Being finite doesn't matter though. Say you could spend an entire day in paradise, but you would have no recollection of it whatsoever and it would be as if it never happened, what meaning would there be to it?
Or, what if you were to find out the entire world would be destroyed tomorrow and everyone will go into non-existence, would everything still matter?
Of course there is. What exactly it might be obviously differs from person to person but most people find meaning and value in their life, through friends, family, work, charity, arts, music the beauty of nature, and so many other things.
Life is more precious because we only live once.
I think you misunderstand the question. I'm asking about objective value - value that exists independently of anyone's feelings and opinions. To me it makes no sense to ask living creatures of their value, because living is something they naturally do and don't exist otherwise.
I don’t think it’s a particularly useful question. Obviously living creatures have an instinct to survive, and so the fact that they consider their own lives to have value appears to be inherent. And most creatures find value in those related to them for similar reasons; it benefits their own survival.
But for most creatures for most of history , and this is certainly true for humans, whether unrelated others had value came down to whether they served some interest in one’s life. If they didn’t, they were generally regarded with either disinterest or disdain.
The radical proposal of Jesus was that we were to assign others the same value that we assigned ourselves, regardless of their relationship to us.
Not really. It's all arbitrary and we're all just meat. The idea of values and morals ultimately leads to nothing. We wouly e only the universe experiencing it self. Nothing more
I think you're too quick to write off the answers of living creatures because of bias. Or rather, why do you need a non-biased opinion?
Because normally we can't evaluate ourselves. Meet a person hight on life and they're gonna tell you life is amazing, meet someone depressed and they will say life is a prison. Our evaluations of life as an occurrence is going to be impacted by our own life as things we go through personally. So having a medium unimpacted by life as we know it brings an opportunity for objective evaluation.
What if you can't get that? The implication isn't that there isn't a value to life, just that you're not getting a non-biased evaluation. Those are two very different things.
If I can get it doesn't impact it's existence. As I mentioned, in such case that would be a difference between lack of value and possibility of value. I find latter outcome quite optimistic and enough to make "leap of faith" and assign subjective value arbitrarily.
have you read Watchmen? (the comic)
A looooong time ago
Dr. Manhattan raises some of the same questions. his defining quote is
"A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"
and the resolution he arrives at at the end is in favor of life because of how absurdly unlikely every single life is.
My favorite number is 70368744177664 and that's because that is the likelihood of you becomming you just by a single combination of your parents cromosomes. (for each chromosome there are four possible combinations, multiply that 23 times because there are 23 chromosomes and you get that number) And that's just for one single generation. multiply it based on the number of possibilities if we take your grandparents, great grandparents into consideration and the number become impossibly huge. The odds of you being you is impossibly small, and yet it did happen, and that makes you a miracle. and the same goes for every living thing.
You know it takes like 9 months of pregnancy and years of love and care for a child to grow to become independent.
How is it related?
Life is precious regardless. Many people sacrifice for years for you and I to exist.
But people sacrifice lives for bad things all the time. Someone puts in their blood, sweat and tears into synthesizing drugs, someone dies in an war to occupy neighboring country, etc.
I am referring to your own parents And grandparents.
Do you have children?
But that would be biased by my own opinion then. Of course I love my ancestors, but thats because Im personality impacted by them. That makes me biased. Even more so if I had kids.
It’s love that’s pour into them and us.
Same for cats or dogs. I don’t believe they have a soul or will go to heaven but does that mean they have no merit or value to life?
Augustine and the great Chain of Being is an interesting thing to look into here. I would agree that without an eternal, objective being to assign value, everything would be value-less, meaning-less.